New England Philharmonic
Performing the masterpieces of our time.

Program Notes

Concert sponsored by Simmons College

Wednesday, March 3, 2004 at 8:00 P.M.
Tsai Performance Center
685 Commonwealth Ave., Boston

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony no. 8

Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra, op. 33

Jacqueline Choi, cello (winner of NEP's 2003-04 Young Artists' Competition)

Andy Vores: Hex (new work commissioned by NEP; World Premiere)

Simmons College Chorale, Sharon Brown, director
Boston Conservatory Women's Chorus, John Delorey, director

Roy Harris: Symphony No. 7

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony no. 8 in F major, op. 93 (1813)

1. Allegro vivace e con brio
2. Allegretto scherzando
3. Tempo di Menuetto
4. Allegro vivace

The Eighth Symphony is usually overlooked by music historians writing about Beethoven's influence on symphonic evolution. The heroism of the Third, the struggle and redemption of the Fifth and Ninth, and the Pastoral Sixth are regarded as pivotal extensions of the 18th-century sonata ideal, opening the symphonic form to a much greater range of drama and emotion than that of earlier classical works. Beethoven added trombones to the orchestra for the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth symphonies, replaced the traditional third-movement minuet with the scherzo, and moved the dramatic weight of the symphony from the first movement to the finale, but throughout his works, he remained true to the sonata principle of tonal and thematic integrity.

Written and premiered in 1813, close on the heels of the Seventh Symphony, the Eighth was much less well received by audiences and critics than its elegant and rhythmically powerful predecessor. It is the shortest of all his symphonies except the First, and is heard far less frequently today than his better-known masterpieces. Beethoven himself, however, seemed to think it superior to the Seventh. Instead of drama, the Eighth presents humor, delight, and a virtuosic blend of the power of his other middle-period works, heard in the first and final movements, with light-hearted, backward-looking classicism in the middle movements. The second movement is marked Allegretto scherzando, perhaps the most famous use of the term meaning "playfully" or "as a joke." He returns to the older use of the minuet in the third movement, and the trombones of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies are absent. Throughout the work, Beethoven alternates between declarative and lyrical passages, makes frequent use of surprising syncopation, and creates a joyful tribute to the classical form. Rather than thinking of the Eighth as a "lesser" symphony, we should hear it with a smile. It is the wink of a master.

--Peter Belknap

Andy Vores (b. 1956)
Hex (2004)

Uneasy Village - Sow Your Sorrows - Brotherless Sisters - Crazy Radoye - Wind Blows - Don't Cry, Eaglets - Blue Frog Kisses My Sweetheart - Nobody

Simmons College Chorale, Sharon Brown, director
Boston Conservatory Women's Chorus, John Delorey, director

World Premiere - NEP Commission

Sow Your Sorrows

Plow, Maro, the plains,
Plow, Maro, the plains,
And sow your sorrows.
If marigold grows for you,
Wither darling for me.
If sweet basil grows for you,
Come to me on bare feet tonight.
If violets grow for you,
We'll kiss until tomorrow.

Brotherless Sisters

Two sisters who had no brother
Made one of silk to share,
Of white silk and of red.
For his waist they used barberry wood,
Black eyes, two precious stones.
For his eyebrows, sea leeches.
Tiny teeth, a string of pearls.
They fed him sugar and honey sweet
And told him: now eat and then speak.

Crazy Radoye

The sky is strewn with stars
The sky is strewn with stars
And the wide meadow with sheep.
The sheep have no shepherd
Except for crazy Radoye
And he has fallen asleep.
His sister Janja wakes him:
Get up, crazy Radoye,
Your sheep have wandered off.
Let them, sister, let them.
The witches have feasted on me,
Mother carved my heart out,
Our aunt held the torch for her.

Wind Blows

Wind blows, one can smell the wild rosemary.
It seems to me my love is coming.
If I knew from what direction
I'd sow sweet basil in his path,
Red roses where there is no path.
Let my love come by their scent,
By their scent and not by the light of day.

Don't Cry, Eaglets

The smallest basil leaf
The smallest basil leaf was heard to whimper:
Silent dew, won't you fall on me?
I fell on you two days in a row,
But today I was distracted watching
The mountain fairy quarrel with an eagle.
The fairy said, the mountain is mine.
The eagle said, no, it's mine.
The fairy broke the eagle's wings.
The eaglets in the nest cried bitterly,
Bitterly they cried in their sorrow.
Don't cry, eaglets in the nest, I said,
I'll take you to the land of India
Where amaranth grows to the horses' knees,
Sweet clover to their shoulders,
And the sun never sets.
At that the eaglets were consoled.

Blue Frog Kisses My Sweetheart

An exquisite
Blue frog
Kisses my sweetheart
In the morning she squats on his forehead
At noon she shines in his hair
In the evening she settles next to his heart
My sweetheart is very happy

Nobody

He shows me tonight
his hair of wire glass and flowers
double-edged lips
five-pointed tongue

Andy Vores was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1956 and has lived in the United States since 1987. He studied composition at Lancaster University with Edward Cowie. After graduating, he was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain Bursary for Composition and moved to London, working as a music copyist and as Lecturer in Composition at the City University. Many of his works received premieres during this time through the SPNM, and from performers such as The Nash Ensemble, Irvine Arditti, the London Sinfonietta, and the BBC Singers, including Humming Harvest Gone Snow Motor, which, in 1985, won first prize in the Alea III International Composition Competition at Boston University. In 1986 he was a Fellow in Composition at Tanglewood, studying with Oliver Knussen. Hammer and Darkness, Mirror and Knife, written that summer, was awarded the Tanglewood Prize for Composition. In 1988 he won the Scottish National Orchestra's Ian Whyte Award, the prize being a commission for a new work, Twistification. In 1990 Sinfonietta was premiered as the prize-winning work in the Omaha Symphony Orchestra's New Music Contest. Commissions include works for Sanford Sylvan, Kathleen Supove, The Borromeo String Quartet, The Cantata Singers, Dominique Labelle, Boston Musica Viva, Collage New Music, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and the New England Philharmonic. From 1999 to 2001 he was Composer in Residence for the FleetBoston Celebrity Series Emerging Artists. He is currently in his second year as Composer in Residence for the New England Philharmonic. Since 2001 he has taught at Boston Conservatory, where he is Chair of Composition and Theory.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Variations on a Rococo Theme, op. 33 (1876)

Jacqueline Choi, violoncello

At the time of this composition, Tchaikovsky was a relatively young composer still searching for his own voice. He had been brought to Moscow some ten years earlier to teach at the newly established Conservatory, and had taken advantage of the musical society he found there to experiment with works in many genres. Although some of these achieved popularity, one of his first significant and enduring instrumental compositions was the First Piano Concerto (1874), which he worked on with the advice (not always heeded) of virtuoso pianists. For the Rococo Variations for cello, he once again turned to a performer to help him explore the possibilities of the instrument. The result is a set of seven variations on a theme that alludes to the era of Mozart, but whose elaborations are completely within Tchaikovsky's style of a century later. Charming and tuneful, with ample opportunity for technical display, the Rococo Variations have been a favorite of performers and audiences since their first hearing.

Roy Harris (1898-1979)
Symphony no. 7 (1952)

Roy Ellsworth Harris created works in all major genres except opera, and he is today perhaps best remembered as one of America's leading composers of symphonies; he wrote some fourteen spanning the years 1933 to 1975. His Symphony no. 3 of 1937, in one movement, was especially well received, and he adopted a similar approach in his Symphony no. 7 of 1951 (revised in 1955).

The single-movement form of this symphony divides into two halves, the first of which is a modernized passacaglia with five variations over a repeating bass line, and the second of which further subdivides into four smaller parts featuring both asymmetrical and symmetrical rhythmic variations, development over the passacaglia melody, and a triumphant summary coda.

The use of a passacaglia harkens back to baroque music, the techniques of which Harris studied, and his melody's modality and his use of organum effects, based on a related variation form from the Middle Ages, further corroborates his fascination with early music. The theme itself is immediately presented by the mid-to-low woodwinds, accompanied by the remaining woodwinds and the strings. Organal parallel-fifth harmonies and thick chord doublings are prominent in much of this work, and the rather long and sustained melody line emphasizes narrow intervals of thirds, fourths, and fifths rather than the wide dissonant leaps associated with the contemporaneous works produced by the Expressionists of the Schoenberg school. The ruggedly individualistic Harris style is in fact quite American to our ears, perhaps bringing to mind the shape-note singing of Colonial days. Though the main melody manages to traverse all twelve tones of the chromatic scale within its twenty-seven notes, the overall effect is nevertheless almost primitive and folk-like, deceptively simple.

The modernity of the works of Roy Harris resides largely in his rhythmic vitality and bold orchestration. In the second main division of this symphony one finds some 85 bars of asymmetrical meters in alternating patterns of 11/8 and 5/8. The Coda may strike listeners as especially jazzy in its phrasings and use of percussion. Another Harris touch can be found in the startling attention to orchestral and harmonic sonorities for their own sake, the swelling ebb and flow, the sensuality and evocation of America's open space.

The Symphony no. 7 of Roy Harris was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation and premiered by the Chicago Symphony on November 20, 1952. It was granted the Walter W. Naumberg Musical Foundation Award in 1955.

--Raymond H. Rosenstock